Bush Visits Colombia Amid Tight Security and Protests

By JIM RUTENBERG and SIMON ROMERO

Published: March 12, 2007

The risky nature of President Bush's trip to this violent country was spelled out on a television monitor aboard Air Force One en route from Uruguay: ''Colombia presents the most significant threat environment of this five country trip!''

Listing the terrorist and criminal threats as ''high,'' the message -- meant for Mr. Bush's security detail but seen by reporters on the plane -- underscored the complications Mr. Bush is confronting during his visit to South and Central America.

Mr. Bush came to Colombia, a focal point of the war on drugs, to pledge support for his closest South American ally, President lvaro Uribe, as leftist leaders in the region seek to counter United States influence. Mr. Bush also came to highlight signs of progress in the Colombian capital, where no American president has visited in more than two decades.

But, as the message on Air Force One showed, it is by no means safe; Mr. Bush stayed here for only seven hours before heading to his next stop, Guatemala. Security officials here even sent a phony airport motorcade as a decoy to flush out any potential attackers on the route to the presidential palace. (There were none.)

Mr. Bush's host is weathering a scandal linking some close supporters to paramilitary drug traffickers and death squads that are on the United States' list of terror groups.

And growing allegations of human rights abuses have led groups like Human Rights Watch -- with new cachet in a United States Congress now under Democratic control -- to oppose approval of a trade deal with Colombia that has already been signed by Mr. Bush.

Anti-Bush protesters battled the police and burned American flags a mile from the presidential palace where they met. At a news conference afterward, Mr. Bush and Mr. Uribe waded directly into questions about the scandal and human rights that are clouding Mr. Uribe's international reputation.

''I appreciate the president's determination to bring human rights violators to justice,'' Mr. Bush said. ''He is strong in that determination; It's going to be very important for members of my United States -- our United States Congress to see that determination. And I believe, if given a fair chance, President Uribe can make the case.''

Asked whether the scandal racking Mr. Uribe's administration had shaken Mr. Bush's confidence in him, Mr. Bush said no, because Mr. Uribe had told him that Colombia's judicial independence would hold people to account regardless of who they are.

Investigations have pointed to kidnappings and the compilation of an assassination list within Colombia's secret police targeting union officials and academics. These actions, according to investigators, may have been carried out by political supporters of Mr. Uribe working with paramilitary leaders.

Mr. Uribe addressed what he called the ''revelations'' about his administration in his opening remarks, saying, they were happening because ''our law on justice and peace requires and demands truth.'' He repeated his argument that the scandal had come to light because of actions promoted by his government, an argument that critics had rejected.

''This spin has no basis in fact,'' said Jos?iguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch in Washington. Mr. Vivanco said the scandal's disclosures were made public through independent investigations by the news media, which Mr. Uribe's government have actively resisted and criticized, and by the attorney general's office and the Supreme Court.

Mr. Bush's aides said he came in part to highlight improvements made under Mr. Uribe, including a more than 30 percent drop in homicides in the last four years and a larger percentage drop in kidnappings and terrorist attacks, according to the State Department.

But the pull of war continues to interrupt daily life here. Just this weekend the State Department confirmed a report in the local news media that United States troops played a supporting role in an operation in January in a part of Colombia under the sway of a Marxist-inspired rebel group holding three American contractors kidnapped in 2003.

The hostages, Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes and Keith Stansell, Northrop Grumman employees here on a drug eradication mission, were taken when their plane crashed in the jungle. Marshall Louis, a spokesman for the United States Embassy here, declined to provide details on the military operation.

Asked about the operation -- the sort relatives of the hostages have warned against -- Mr. Bush said, ''I've obviously discussed this with the president, and he's developing strategies that will hopefully bring them out safely and that's all I ask.''

Mr. Bush arrived to the pomp of a state visit. The importance of each man to the other -- Mr. Uribe as an ally in a region with shifting allegiances; Mr. Bush as Colombia's single largest outside benefactor -- was on full display.

The welcoming ceremonies were far more lavish than anything that has greeted Mr. Bush so far on this trip. He and the first lady, Laura Bush, exited Air Force One to a phalanx of soldiers in full dress as a military band played. They were feted again in the central square of the presidential palace, Casa de Nari?where the president reviewed Colombian troops, and stood for the playing of both national anthems, before entering the palace for meetings with Mr. Uribe.

Mr. Bush's visit to Bogot?as in itself a statement of support for Mr. Uribe: No American president has visited the capital city since 1982, largely because of security concerns.

Aides said Mr. Bush chose to come to illustrate that under Mr. Uribe it was now possible for an American president to visit without incident.

But his hosts were not taking any chances. After the empty decoy motorcade left the airport, the real one traveled to the palace at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour under heavy military guard, with 20,000 troops and police assigned to his protection, lining his route with submachine guns visible on the street and on rooftops. The motorcade passed nearby protesters carrying a large sign that read ''Yankee Go Home'' and another banner displaying the Communist hammer and sickle.

The leading local newspaper here, El Tiempo, griped that Mr. Bush's visit was too short, featuring a front-page headline that read, ''Bush: Seven hours are enough?'' Above it read a smaller headline listing the visits by the last two United States president to visit the city: ''Kennedy (1961, 13 hours) and Reagan (1982, 5 hours).''

Aides traveling with the president said the headline was indicative of the push-pull relationship between the United States and its southern neighbors -- showing how upon Mr. Bush's arrival here he could at once be criticized for not staying long enough and for daring to come at all.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Uribe took questions from reporters under a portrait of Sim?ol?r, the South American liberation hero at the heart of the militaristic populism of President Hugo Ch?z of Venezuela, a populism that is often described as ''Bolivarianism.''

Mr. Ch?z, on his own tour of the region, gave a speech at a military base in Bolivia in which he accused Mr. Bush of plotting to assassinate him. Mr. Ch?z, while pledging financial support for Bolivian flood victims, said capitalism was ''the road to hell.''

Photo: Demonstrators in Colombia clashed with the police yesterday after President Bush arrived in Bogotá. (Photo by Daniel Munoz/Reuters)

Map of Central and South America highlighting countries President Bush visited: Mr. Bush headed to Guatemala City after his trip to Colombia.